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A Second Look: Obama To Ask Agency Heads For Budget Cuts and the AP Allows a LIE!

Apr 18th, 2009
by Tom.
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via Obama To Ask Agency Heads For Budget Cuts.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama said Saturday he will ask all of his department and agency heads for specific proposals for cutting their budgets at his Cabinet meeting early next week as he searches for ways to streamline government spending.

Maybe if Obama had begun this process immediately he may have been able to tailor his budget to fit a bit better and not drawn the ire of those like Limbaugh who want him to fail.

There is something very contentious about this article and I’m so upset I could just crap. The author has plugged in a comment by a Republican Congressman, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), that is an out and out LIE and just let the comment sit there as if it were the truth. The Associated Press, once again, has shown its true colors as shills for the right and a main element in the right-wing nut-job echo chamber.

Here’s the LIE in BOLD. I included both paragraphs for context:

Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif - Liar

“Earlier this week, President Obama said that we need to get serious about fiscal discipline by trimming waste in the federal budget,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in the GOP address. “Republicans couldn’t agree more. We want to work with the president to get our financial house back in order.”

“It’s irresponsible to borrow more than all previous American presidents combined. And it must stop if we want to get our economy moving again,” McCarthy said. “When will all this spending and borrowing end?”

I’m sorry, but that dubious distinction belongs to none other than George W. Bush!

The AP has let this lie hang there as if it were the truth. Where has honest journalism gone? I suppose I’ll have to do what the AP has forgotten how to do and that is to tell the truth.

When Bush entered office, the national debt was around $5 trillion, when he left office the debt had been doubled to $10 trillion. More borrowed debt than all other administrations combined.

Obama’s budget looks big, around $3.6 trillion, but it is transparent where Bush kept two or three different sets of books. Bush tried to conceal his borrowing. This year’s revenues will cut subtract from that figure  and according to how much he can cut wasteful spending the deficit should only be about $1 trillion since this year’s revenues should be about $2.5 trillion.

The AP author should be taken out and hung in the streets (metaphorically) for letting this lie stand. Other news agencies are repeating this and also not debunking. I read the exact same story at MSNBC. Sad. Don’t these crack-head loose cannon writers have editors?

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A Second Look: Just Foreign Policy News, February 2, 2009

Feb 3rd, 2009
by Tom.
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Just Foreign Policy wrote:

Just Foreign Policy News, February 2, 2009


From: Just Foreign Policy [info@justforeignpolicy.org]
Sent: Monday, February 02, 2009 5:08 PM
To: Tom Chambless
Subject: Just Foreign Policy News, February 2, 2009
Summary: 1) Obama seems unlikely to widen war in Afghanistan
Anne Gearan, Associated Press, Saturday, January 31, 2009; 12:00 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/31/AR2009013100355.html


1) Obama has done little since taking office to suggest he will significantly widen the war against the Taliban, writes Anne Gearan for AP. Obama said he wants to add troops to turn back the Taliban, but has not gone beyond the 30,000 additional forces already under consideration by the previous administration. Those troops would double the U.S. presence, but amount to a “finger in the dike,” Gearan says.


Fourteen days. Obama has been in office fourteen days. Two weeks!

Obama has also done little since taking office to cure cancer, invent warp drive, and solve the Great Train Robbery.

Everyone just chill out.

You know, this is a trade mark of the Associated Press. They are mere alarmists doing whatever they can do to help promote the right-wing agenda. This little article is a scare tactic designed to add fuel to the fire of the right-wing talk machine. The Associated Press cleverly disguises their fake alarmism as main stream news. The statement charging that Obama “has not gone beyond” the 30,000 additional troops is insinuating that common wisdom says he must deploy more than that number to be effectual. The truth is the verdict is still out on how much effect that number of additional troops will have.

Debunking the AP:

Remember, the 30,000 troops aforementioned is an increase, not total. The Bush administration may have considered adding troops in Afghanistan, but Bush did not ever mention removing that many troops from Iraq to accomplish that mission. The Associated Press leads you to believe Obama is just following through with Bush’s plan – not true. In September 2008, Bush ordered half of the 8000 troops scheduled to rotate out of Iraq to be redeployed to Afghanistan – in February 2009, after he leaves office. This addition of only four thousand troops, far less than Obama’s number, was his “quiet surge” plan. Now, after January 20th, that ball is in Obama’s court.

Debunking the AP’s Petraeus mystique:

Also ahead is Army Gen. David Petraeus’ wider survey of both the Afghan and Iraq wars and other issues in the Middle East. Petraeus, military architect of the troop increase of U.S. troops in Iraq, is not likely to recommend a similar one in Afghanistan.

The Associated Press talks like the great General is about to give an edict from on high and the world will quake. President Obama will guide General Petraeus and the good General will fight the war(s) in accordance with Obama’s policies, guidelines, and objectives.

,,,,,,,

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A Second Look: Attorney General Holder Expected To Change Bush Policies

Feb 3rd, 2009
by Tom.
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via Attorney General Holder Expected To Change Bush Policies.

LARRY MARGASAK | February 3, 2009 07:17 AM EST | AP

Another key question facing Holder is whether to reverse former President George W. Bush’s order that three of his former top aides _ Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten _ should not testify before Congress about firings of U.S. attorneys. Rove and Miers were former aides when Bush gave his order.

Right-wing shills

Another Associated Press story with an exaggerated headline designed to inflame the right-wing. Once into the article you find speculation and assumption on what Holder might do in respect to Congressional actions and other issues previously pondered by the Main Stream Media. Nothing is mentioned insinuating those issues need changing and reversing Bush is the right thing to do, of course. Instead the article is designed to leave us doubting the change Holder can bring proving the Associated Press, like the Republican Party, is on the wrong side of history.

This next sentence, further down in the article, is a perfect example of the attempt at sensationalism – making the title of the story controversial, but the content remains benign:

The Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program is certain to come under Holder’s scrutiny.

It certainly will. But is this something we don’t know? The next sentence in the article was obviously written to support the previous claim about warrantless wiretapping. It’s nothing but a rehashing of history to remind us what happened and fluff the article:

After a lengthy and heated debate that pitted privacy and civil liberties concerns against the desire to prevent terrorist attacks, Congress last year eased the rules under which the government could wiretap American phone and computer lines to listen for terrorists and spies.

The verdict here is the sensational artlicle announced in the headline goes flat in the reading. The Associated Press has once again taken an event such as the historic confirmation of Eric Holder and has tried to turn it into something questionable. This is yet another example of the right-wing leanings of the AP.

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